Wednesday, January 04, 2012

"Excuses are for people who need them..."

Yesterday was a pretty laid-back kind of day aside from the whole 6:30am wake-up so you can go get a long-winded blood-test done thing. As a reward for finally getting the blood-work done I stopped off at the fruit&veggie seller and bought myself 1/2 kilo of strawberries because the price was (finally) right. (It's kind of fun that strawberry season on this side of the world is in the dead-of-winter.)

I was home by 9:30 and I didn't do much of anything. Well - I did mix up a batch of 24-hour-pizza-dough (more on that later.) I also impressed myself by washing the pareve and dairy dishes! (How awesome am I?!)

Later in the afternoon I helped out a friend by taking her to the dentist to have a wisdom tooth removed (no fun to have done and especially no fun to have to go alone.) On the way back to her dorm (she was still all numbed up) so I insisted that we stop and pick up some ice cream for her to enjoy when the '2-hour-post-op-period' was over.

Dinner was mini-pastel from the freezer and really delicious mashed-potato-puffs while watching some pointless comedy.

This morning I woke up on the earlier side and Z was amazing and brought me my toast with butter and jam in bed. (Heehee, how sweet? Ok - truth be told he's been doing it every day for the last 3 months or so - but today I feel like boasting about it.)

When I was feeling up to it I shlepped myself out of bed and decided that today was the day that I found a way to use the 2 red-grapefruits that have been sitting in the fruit bowl for just a bit too long. A quick internet search led me to some citrus-y type cupcakes. I tweaked the recipe (used oil instead of butter, used slightly less zest, used soymilk, and made 1.5 batches using 2 medium eggs.) I also double-dipped the tops into the glaze made from powdered sugar and grapefruit juice and ended up with the perfect muffin. They were tangy and refreshing. Decidedly citrusy but not too sweet. And 4 out of 12 were missing by the time I went to put them away in the freezer a few hours later...

Game-night on Monday had been cancelled on account of a BIG studio presentation that the guys are working on. Z asked if they could maybe possibly come tonight and I said I didn't mind. (After all - that's why we buy pasta when it's on sale!) I baked a 1/2-batch of this peanut butter chocolate chip coffee cake (in an 8" round pan - and used oil instead of butter because I was too lazy to melt anything.) for 'just in case' they actually came - figuring that even if only 1 slept over it would be a nice breakfast for in the morning.

But I warned Z that even if the guys were coming that they wouldn't be arriving until 9pm and that I was still planning on making the thin crust pizza that I'd prepped the dough for yesterday for dinner at around 6pm. I even went ahead and made the tomato sauce listed in the recipe (though I had to peel/seed my own tomatoes because I didn't have any in a can.)

If you are looking for pizzeria perfection (in the comfort of your own home, for a fraction of the cost, even if you don't have a pizza peel or a pizza stone...) then THIS is the recipe you need to try. It had that awesome thin crust - crispy on the bottom but that awesome chewy-gooey stuff under the cheese. I went easy on the sauce (as indicated in the original post - it was quite potent) and ALL the taste was there but without the mouth-filling gloppiness that you get from marinara sauce - it really let the flavor of the crust and the cheese shine without being drowned out in the least bit! I was SO impressed - but I'm not the gauge by which we measure such things. What do I mean? Well, we always look to Z for a comment on the matter. In this instance the fact that he devoured his crusts sealed the issue (he NEVER eats the crusts. Not even when he's really really really hungry!)

Ok - so it's true - you can't just decide to make this particular pizza on the spur of the moment, or even that morning - it requires some forethought - but considering that the dough can stay in the fridge for up to 3 days... well, I'm all in favor of making it for 'just in case' you decide you want pizza one day that week! I love that the whole affair comes together in the food processor (dough and sauce) and I am a HUGE fan of the whole 'no-knead' philosophy (because it seems impossible and implausible but it really works!) And anyway - according to the original post you can freeze this miraculous stuff and so long as you pull it out in the morning you CAN enjoy pizza any day!

I really should have taken pictures of everything (because the citrus flecked muffins were gorgeous, the coffee cake belonged in a bakery and the pizza was a work of art) but I was super-lazy today and didn't even take out my camera until the second pizza came out of the oven - and by that point all we could think about was the torture of waiting 5 whole minutes before cutting into it in order to devour it - crust and all.

Mind you - I found the space somewhere in me to enjoy some ice cream for dessert. Because after all - the only appropriate thing to follow incredibly good pizza is ridiculously tasty ice cream...